Reenchanting Humanity: A Theology of Mankind

by Owen Strachan

Re-Enchanting Humanity (Aug)

Genres: Theology, Anthropology, Christian, Faith, Gender

432 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2019

About the author

Dr. Owen Strachan is Provost and Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary (GBTS). Before coming to GBTS, he served as Associate Professor of Christian Theology and Director of the Residency PhD Program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS). He holds a PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, an MDiv from Southern Seminary, and an AB from Bowdoin College. Strachan has published fourteen books and writes regularly for the Christian Post, and Thoughtlife, his Patheos blog. Strachan hosts the City of God podcast. He is married and is the father of three children.
You can also connect with Strachan on Facebook.

Reviews

[Dr. David Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was recently asked by a parishioner to evaluate a professing Christian author. My response was tenuous as the author under consideration is notoriously difficult to nail down. Is he a Calvinist or an Arminian? A Complementarian or an Egalitarian? Does he affirm the authority, inherency, and infallibility of Scripture? One may never know. Frankly, it would be easier to nail jello to a wall than decipher the theological commitment of the author in question!

One of the many reasons, I appreciate Owen Strachan so much is that he is the polar opposite of the author above. Agree or disagree, readers always know where Dr. Strachan stands. His latest book is no exception.

Reenchanting Humanity: A Theology of Mankind is a book that is desperately needed by the church in our day. Many in the church have lost their bearings (some appear to have lost their minds). The journey to the Celestial City has been sidetracked by compromise, theological error, and political correctness. Instead of sailing to our heavenly home with biblical fidelity, scores of people have surrendered their oars and are dog-paddling in a different direction. Rather than affirming what the Scripture affirms about mankind, they embrace the ideology of the zeitgeist. Instead of tethering their view of mankind to Christ, they cling to the flimsy and flawed view of culture.

Reenchanting Humanity is a theological antidote to the rampant compromise which is currently polluting the church and corroding the pillars of the Christian mind. But Reenchanting Humanity is more than an antidote. It is more than a defensive reaction to the godless ideology that infects the church. Rather, it is an offensive biblical bombshell that destroys error and bolsters the Christian worldview.

The lofty aim of Reenchanting Humanity is “to give future pastors of Christ’s church great confidence in the doctrine of man.” Strachan’s hope is that “those facing many challenges to this doctrine from inside and outside the church, will gain strength from or rigorously biblical and theological study of theocentric anthropology.”

Dr. Strachan’s goal is achieved in the space of 418 pages. He anchors this tour in anthropology by demonstrating that creatures are made in the imago Dei. In other words, we have been created by God - for his glory. As such we have intrinsic value. He rightly notes, “Mankind is not an accident; mankind is the special creation of almighty God. By recapturing the biblical account of human origins, we recapture human dignity, human worth, and our own identities.”

But the Bible clearly describes how creatures sinned and fell far from God. Strachan skillfully shows readers the many consequences of the fall and helps them decipher where work, sexuality, race and ethnicity, technology, and justice fit in a fallen world.

The chapter entitled, Contingency is thought-provoking, challenging, and illuminating. The author writes, “Humanity was, is, and will be contingent. We are wholly dependent on God, wholly under divine control, and wholly and unalterably beings made by God.” He continues, “We need God. We depend on him for existence, but just as significantly, we depend on him for purpose, meaning, and the discovery of hope. Take away the Lord, and all is futile.” And so the fact of contingency weighs heavily on creatures. Tragically, however, many either refuse to acknowledge their contingent status or give up entirely. But Strachan reminds us, “The biblical portrait of man’s temporality drives us not to despair but to worship God. Once reconciled to the reality of our finitude on the earth, we may reverse our natural instincts and adopt a mind-set of savoring all the wonder, mystery, beauty, pain, promise, challenge, and purposefulness of our God-given days.”

Reenchanting Humanity is clear, consistent, compelling, comprehensive, and countercultural. These important attributes will likely make the book vulnerable to criticism and mark out the book as a target for detractors. But readers who maintain their allegiance to Scripture will appreciate Strachan’s approach, which is relentlessly biblical and faithful to the truth.

Quite frankly, I found Reenchangting Humanity enthralling. Strachan never backs away from controversy and he is unafraid of telling the truth about the condition of mankind. But the book concludes with a majestic crescendo as the author guides readers to the Lord Jesus Christ and the story of the second Adam: “Truly, he is the new humanity, and he is leading a new exodus to the new heavens and the new earth. He is the salvation and ontological restoration we so desperately need; his new covenant blood washes us clean, makes us new creations, and gives us new names.”

Reenchanting Humanity: A Theology of Mankind is not only highly recommended; it is one of the best books of 2019!

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Owen Strachan of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has provided a very accessible answer to the question, what has God said in the Bible about how to understand humanity?

Coming at this book as an American evangelical with a substantial interest in better understanding the Bible and theology and seeking a useful grounding for my belief and practice in a post-modern and post-Christian American culture, Dr. Strachan has helped me - and I trust many others - think thought many thorny issues.

While I can be be sure that there are places where my piecemeal education in biblical and systematic theology leaves me less than fully prepared to place his positions in the context of other orthodox scholars of theology, I am confident that many Christians - and perhaps those who are not - can benefit from this well-written book.

The book is divided into 9 chapters. Chapter 1 begins where any solidly Biblical system of theology must - with God. We can understand humanity best by starting with God making us in His image. Chapter 2 considers how humanity's fall in the Garden of Eden displayed our free will to sin, losing what God had given us and exchanging this status for a depraved fallen nature that fundamentally mars humankind and explains at the deepest level the suffering and pain that fills the earth.

That God made human beings for meaningful and purposeful work is one of the ways He made us like Himself is the key point of Chapter 3. That is not an insight that I had previously grasped and yet it fits very well with what God did in creating the entire universe, with Adam and Eve as His masterworks. That we tend to either resent or worship work - and recreation - does fundamentally resonate with American society as I have lived in it.

Next, Chapter 4 traces how human sinfulness likewise mars God's gift of sexuality. First, we find embedded in Genesis 3 an insight into the history of men seeking to take advantage of women in and outside of marriage, as well as women's desire to co-opt male leadership in the family. Both factors stand outside God's good design, every bit as much as do all modes of other sexual expression outside of the covenanted marriage of a man and a woman. The modern modes of homosexuality, bisexuality, extra-marital sex, non-martial sex, and transgenderism - as well as abortion - stand out of modern facts that have deeply pagan roots in denying God as Lord of all aspects of human life.

Chapter 5 addresses human race and ethnicity. People have long divided themselves along these lines, wrongful mistreating other peoples and other individuals due to a claim of superiority. Instead, we must, in looking at humanity through the lens of the Bible, focus on the sameness of al humanity. Most of all, the church should lead the way in addressing racism, a way in which Strachan freely admits our failure. As a white man who is a member of a Southern Baptist Convention church, the ways in which this church body grew out of an unbiblical defense of racial enslavment and actively resisted racial equality even in the twentieth century stand out as a stinging rebuke and reminder of these deep harms.

Chapter 6 looks at a perhaps less expected topic: technology. God created humanity with an ability to innovate using His gifts of brain and brawn, and molding the elements of the world God created. From farming implements to today's smart phones, technology can be used to give God glory, or to deny His rightful worship.

The issue of justice from a Biblical vantage point is the focus of Chapter 7. Most intriguingly, Straham remind us that, when those who deny God's very existence rightfully demand justice and lament injustice, those very people inadvertently point to the Creator. Only a God who creates and whose character is just can set an objective standard of right and wrong. Those who allege that humanity lacks a Creator and are just carriers of our selfish genes, to use Dawkins' now-generation-old phrase, cannot plausibly point to any sort of solid reason to claim that anything has an objective moral standard.

Chapter 8 considers our human limits as creatures created by God and contingent upon His will for our continued existence. Here, we see the desire for immortality and the deep desire to escape the sort of seeming dead-end that death must be for the person who denies God. Yet, if we rest in God's revelation that He created us for His glory and that we find a promise of marvelous existence with Him forever if we repent and believe, we can find solace for the suffering in this life and the stark reality that we all will die one day. The older I become, the more often I think on this truth.

Lastly, Owen Stracham finished his book with a focus on Christ in Chapter 9. The true God-man, the eternal Son made incarnate, the perfect Second Adam, as Savior and propitiation for our sins, Jesus alone can save, re-enchant a fallen humanity, and restore each one who believes to the wonderful future for which God created each of us.

[Reagan Bon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If the major issue of the sixteenth century was that of 'acceptance' (how man may be forgiven by God), and the major issue of the twentieth century was that of 'authority' (whether the Bible is inerrant), then the major issue of our time is that of 'anthropology.' Does the human person live in an ordered cosmos and have an appointed identity, or does he make his own identity in a world without God?"

Strachan's book is rich, yet readable and intensely relevant. He flies in the face of secular dogmas as he unapologetically explores what Scripture teaches us about various dimensions of humanity, including the effects of the fall, and our perspectives on work, race and ethnicity, sexuality, technology, and death. Though he seems to have written the book with pastors and seminarians in mind, I am rather of the opinion that it ought to be widely read by lay Christians as well, given the "disenchanted" world we must reckon with day in and day out.

[Drake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Filled to the brim with truth and has some really insightful sections, but overall gets hampered by overly-academic language (hard to know at times what audience he’s writing for), lack of depth, overuse of lengthy quotes in footnotes, and absence of anything that appeals to the imagination (in spite of the title and cover art). Solid, but not quite the slam dunk I was hoping for.

[Thomas Creedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extraordinarily mixed book.

[Cameron Malott · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the opening pages of his book Reenchanting Humanity, Dr. Owen Strachan sets a remarkable tone for his theology of mankind. “There is immense and even grandiose potential and dignity in our persons...God, the beautiful one, made the human race his capstone work, his corporeal masterpiece,” (page 2) he writes. Taken out of context, one might assume this statement originated from a TV preacher promoting “little-g god” theology, blurring the lines between the Creator and his creatures. However, Strachan repudiates the humanistic concepts of “self-determination” and “self-authenticity” (page 12), and affirms that mankind is “totally depraved” and “evil to the core” (page 94). Strachan’s intent is not to deny the Bible’s teaching on sin, but rather to appreciate and marvel at the “pièce de résistance of the holy work of God” (page 14).
At first this approach felt a little uncomfortable to me, as I have approached the Bible from the reformed perspective nearly my entire Christian life, and was a little afraid of loosening my grip on doctrines like total depravity and total inability. But as Strachan’s thesis unfolded I began to realize the tremendous value in seeing humanity not only in its current distorted and malfunctioning state, but also in both its original uncorrupted state and future glorified state. Furthermore, these states are not ontologically opposed, but are all tied together by common threads. Having laid this theological groundwork, Strachan applies these truths to many facets of human life including work, sexuality, and ethnicity, and shows how God’s work of salvation does not remove our humanity, but rather restores it: “True humanity does not mean sinning” (page 355).
The biggest weakness of this book its level of depth, not of thought (Strachan is a formidable thinker), but of exploration. Particularly in chapters 4-7, I felt a bit like a scuba diver without an air tank, swimming down just deep enough to see the vast complexity under the surface, but having to return to for air and move on to the next reef before observing any significant detail. I’m sure that Strachan’s response to this criticism would simply be “read my other books,” which I probably should. My only other complaint is the occasional use of highfalutin words like “elide,” “nascent,” and “instantiate;” I felt these concepts could have been communicated more clearly had Strachan used more readily-known synonyms. Again, maybe I should just read more.

[Sean McGaughran · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful theological overview of biblical anthropology with a wide array of practical applications for our present cultural moment.

[Samuel Bierig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartening. Challenging. Refreshing. Strachan is an expressive and enjoyable writer. He ably addressed the subject in an attractive and particularly Christocentric way. He suffuses exegesis and Biblical Theology and dogmatics all together. You should read it!

[Jason Alligood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthropology is certainly an underrepresented category in Systematics, especially perhaps in single volume treatises. Considering that alone, if one were to take up such a volume, he or she would perhaps not find it to be a warm and inviting read.

Enter Dr. Owen Strachan's Reenchanting Humanity. It is, as my headline suggests, a refreshing anthropology in its warm tone and readable nature. I would place it somewhere in the middle of popular and academic, with most of the language and references being accessible to the non-scholar, but with enough depth to challenge the learned reader to dig into the copious footnotes and wrestle with Strachan's interactions with these other noted scholars.

The strength of this book is not just its readability and tone, but more than that its focus upon man as the Imago Dei (a stimulating discourse in and of itself), the fall of man (the Imago Dei not lost or malformed), the reality of our culture in light of the fall (dealing with issues of race, sexuality, justice, etc.), and how all of this is transformed through the true human, the God-man, Jesus Christ, who has succeeded where Adam (and mankind) has failed and has become the substitute for them on the cross, and been raised again so that those who are in Him have the hope of not only being fully human, but truly human, as He is.

It is presented in a very legible format (in fact the font seems just a tad too big, in my humble opinion) and is beautifully bound.

For any who are wanting to read an exhilarating work on a Christian view of Anthropology, I would highly recommend Reenchanting Humanity.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good theological works on anthropology are hard to find, especially ones that are faithful to Scripture and built upon sound exegesis. Strachan's volume delivers on these fronts. In nine chapters, he discusses the basic building blocks of a doctrine of mankind: the image of God, the fall, vocation, sexuality, technology, race and ethnicity, justice, contingency, and Christology. The ordering is loosely drawn from the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and in general I find Strachan positions to be helpful, faithful to Scripture, and insightful.

A few small critiques. While Strachan is a gifted writer and wordsmith, at times his ability to turn a phrase seems to get the better of him, and the structure of his argument is weakened by unnecessarily expressive writing. This is a subjective matter, so it may be my personal tastes (though I love a well-turned phrase as well as the next Chesterton and Lewis fan); but at times it felt like the writing style obstructed the actual argument being made. And then, at a few points, Strachan introduces some idiosyncratic theological positions without substantial argumentation (for instance, the idea that the Son would have become incarnate without Adam's fall, or the suggestion that Christ did not "experience temptation" on p.356). I think these points could have been shored up, but they're not departures from orthodoxy, just places that (in my judgment) the argument of the book could be strengthened. Overall, this is a very helpful first resource on theological anthropology.

[Gary Ellison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strachan’s book left me wanting more. The premise, or at least my expectation, was that this book would be bursting with apologetics or at least have an apologetic edge to it, equipping the reader to ‘reenchant’ the world with a biblical vision of humanity. Instead, it was an unpacking of a theology of mankind without any pointed application as to what the reader should do about it. I agreed with a vast amount of Strachan’s material (I think the Keller’s treatment of gender roles in ‘The Meaning of Marriage’ is much more helpful than Owen’s treatment) and it was helpful to read through it but I was a bit disappointed at the lack of apologetic material. This book will serve as a launching pad for sermons/lectures on the topic of humanity.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to this book but it ended up being a bit of a struggle due to the sheer wording of simple concepts. It frequently seemed like complicated & obscure words were used simply for the sake of their lofty style rather than because they were what best communicated the concepts being unpacked.

I did still love certain chapters but this isn't something that I would readily recommend to friends because it doesn't actually read at the lay level even though it isn't exactly written for the academic level either.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, excellent, thought provoking, what the world needs-the true way for man to experience excellence, achievement, satisfaction, an overwhelming sense of purpose & direction. All this is is ours if we have understanding & wisdom, if we are properly united with wisdom & if we have a perpetual relationship with understanding, how are these things ours? How do attain such things & such status, through Christ who restores the man in every way match what God has created him to be.

[RT · Rating 2 out of 5]

Helpful for what it is. Reads more like a college research paper than anything else. The formatting even seems to have simply bound his research paper. Personally not a huge fan of the author’s writing. Will use when needed. Certainly more dated for current issues surrounding anthropology than it is as a primary reference on the doctrine itself (at least in this reader’s opinion). Better works have been written, yet worth reading if not worth purchasing for when it’s needed.

[Jonathan Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was waiting eagerly and not patiently for this book to come out. So I had high expectations, and it did not disappoint! Highly recommend this to all pastors and lay church goers! Our battle today is over the image of God and I know this will be a book I return to over and over again!! Go get this book

[Davis Dunkleberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a phenomenal book walking through Scripture’s influence on how we view ourselves, our callings, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Strachan writes in a powerful way speaking to attacks on our humanity with what God says we are and how we view ourselves through His eyes. Deeply impactful and a book to stand the test of time.

[Jonathan Homesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good

[Erik Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!

[Keller Hackbusch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book by Owen Strachan. It is well written and thorough on the topic of man's identity and redemption. Highly recommended!

[Mark Stacy II · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an absolute pleasure to read. Biblical anthropology is as important a subject as any and Owen Strachan’s work here is exceptional.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful antidote and salvo against the spirit of the age as it relates to the nature and purpose of men and women in God's creational order. Highest of recommendations.

[Timothy Dehne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Dr. Jon Pirtle]

Biblical, well-cited, footnoted, referenced, and winsomely written, grateful for this piece from Strachan.

Avoid Strachan's woke stuff.

But this piece is solid. Highly recommended.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Owen Strachan has written a masterful and insightful piece of theology here. Certainly, the doctrine of anthropology is under fire today both in the church and in the culture. The human person is being reenvisioned in scores of ways. Where previous generations of Christians fought ideological battles on the nature of the Trinity, Christ's hypostatic union, justification by faith alone, and the infallibility of Scripture, today, the major question hinges upon a theology of mankind. Strachan puts it in this way: "If the major issue of the sixteenth century was that of acceptance (how man may be forgiven by God), and the major issue of the twentieth century was that of authority (whether the Bible was inerrant), then the major issue of our time is that of anthropology. Does the human person live in an ordered cosmos and have an appointed identity, or does he make his own identity in a world without God?" (3).

The present age is a season where previously held beliefs about humanity are eroding and breaking down. Transhumanism, posthumanism, transgenderism, homosexuality, feminism, and postmarital sexual libertinism are just a few samples of such staunchly anti-biblical ideologies. The church needs to be equipped, standing on the word of God, building up what it means to be a true image bearer.

Human beings are seeking to define themselves in various ways, perhaps vocationally, or even through various forms of sexual expression. But it is the "imago dei that marks out humanity as an enchanted race. Tragically, humanity disenchanted itself by following the anti-wisdom of the serpent" (4). Only through the God-man, "the one who brings light back into our eyes and hope back into our souls," can we find freedom, flourishing, and purpose in becoming who we were made to be and glorify God through offering obedient worship to him (382).

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of the topic.